Summary

Winner, 1995, category of Computer Science, Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. Despite enormous investments in computers over the last twenty years, productivity in the very service industries at which they were aimed virtually stagnated everywhere in the world. If computers are not making businesses, organizations, or countries more productive, then why are we spending so much time and money on them? Cutting through a raft of technical data, Thomas Landauer explains and illustrates why computers are in trouble and why massive outlays for computing since 1973 have not resulted in comparable productivity payoffs. Citing some of his own successful research programs, as well as many others, Landauer offers solutions to the problems he describes. While acknowledging that mismanagement, organizational barriers, learning curves, and hardware and software incompatibilities can play a part in the productivity paradox, Landauer targets individual utility and usability as the main culprits. He marshals overwhelming evidence that computers rarely improve the efficiency of the information work they are designed for because they are too hard to use and do too little that is sufficiently useful. Their many features, designed to make them more marketable, merely increase cost and complexity. Landauer proposes that emerging techniques for user-centered development can turn the situation around. Through task analysis, iterative design, trial use, and evaluation, computer systems can be made into powerful tools for the service economy. Landauer estimates that the application of these methods would make computers have the same enormous impact on productivity and standard of living that were the historical results of technological advances in energy use (the steam engine, electric motors), automation in textiles and other manufacture, and in agriculture. He presents solid evidence for this claim, and for a huge benefit-to-cost ratio for user-centered design activities backed by descriptions of how to do these necessary things, of promising applications for better computer software designs in business, and of the relation of user-centered design to business process reengineering, quality, and management.

Author Biography

Thomas Landauer is Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado.

Preface
Prologue: The Trouble with Computers
What Trouble?
Why? Poor Usefulness and Usability Due to Poor Evaluation, That's Why
What This Book Will Say
The Productivity Puzzle
The Evidence
History
Country Comparisons
Econometric Analyses of the Productivity Slowdown
Comparisons between Industries
Comparisons between Firms and over Time
Econometric Analyses of the Productivity Effects of Information Technology
Computers and Business Success
Putting Two and Two Together: Could Computer Failure Be the Missing Piece in the Productivity Puzzle?
What Computers Do
Employment
Individual Firm Experience
Individual Worker Efficiency
Silver Linings
The Productivity Paradox
The Productivity Slowdown: A Hypothesis
Summary of the Evidence against Computers
Solutions to the Puzzle
Excuses
Counterarguments
The Productivity of Computer Manufacture
Popularity and Sales
Individual Testimonials
Insider Testimonials
Industry Leader Testimonials
What to Make of the Opinions
Measurement Problems
It's Too Early to Tell
Coincidence
Competitive Success
We've Come About as Far as We Can Go
Complacency
Summarizing the Excuses
Reasons
High Cost
Slow Learning
Unreliability
Reluctant Labor
Computer Illiteracy
The Organization of Organizations
Mismanagement
Overuse
Underuse
Misuse
The Design of Software
Usability
Standardization
Complexity
Usefulness
How We Got Here
The Trouble with Computers
What's Wrong with Them
Usefulness and Usability
Usefulness
Usability
Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Tools
Data Storage and Retrieval
Text Storage and Retrieval
Word Processing and Text Editing
Spreadsheets
Graphics Programs
Desktop Publishing
Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems
Point-of-Sale Systems
Transaction Systems
Desirability: A Critical Combination of Usefulness and Usability
Other Troubles
Technical Limitations
Unreliability
Incompatibility
Well-Known "Successes" and "Failures"
ATMs Again
Reservation Systems
The Macintosh User Interface
Some Not So Successful Examples
Software Design, Development, and Deployment
Design
Development
Deployment
Hype and Broken Promises: or, Why Do We Love Them Still?
Why Do People Buy Computers?
What They Do Do
Perennially Promised Panaceas
How to Decide?
IT Sci-Fi
Assessing Usefulness and Usability
Who Decides?
How to Decide?
The Feature Fallacy
Why We Love Them Still
How to Fix Computers
The Track Record So Far
User-Centered Design
What Stands in the Way?
Why Are They So Bad?
Computers Are Hard to Use
Traditional Designers Have Bad Intuition about Usability
We Can Do Better!
Summing Up What UCDesign Can Do
Getting from Here to There, How Fast? Very.
Staying the Present Course
Efficiency Prediction sans UCD
Using UCD to Its Fullest
Efficiency Prediction cum UCD
Predicting Overall Productivity
Here's How
A Story about Maps
Two Tales from DEC
The IBM 1984 Olympic Message System
A Scene from Xerox
The SuperBook Saga
Electronic Documents
SuperBook's Research Foundations
The Trouble with Information Retrieval
Unlimited Aliases
An Index that Learns
Navigating in a Sea of Words
SuperBook Version 0
Evaluations
Further Applications and Tests
SuperBook Lessons
User-Centered Design
User-Centered Design Methods
Task Analysis
Formative Design Evaluation
The Gold Standard: User Testing
A Good Second Best: Heuristic Evaluation
Paper, Pencil, Plastic, and Palaver
Engineering Models
Performance Analysis
Time Is the Essence
Errors Are the Villains
Learning from Learning
Variability Is a Source of Progress
The Talent Search
An Aside: Different Strokes for Different Folks?
Guidelines, Standards, and Examples
Science
User-Centered Development
Usability and Development
Usability Evaluation for Software Development
Is It Worth It?
Some Barriers
Some Problems
Separate Interface from Functionality?
How Many Tests?
Who Are the Testers?
The Value of Usability for Software Development
Speeding the Process
Is There an Easier Way?
Programmers Are Users Too
Summing Up User-Centered Development
User-Centered Deployment
or, What to Use Them For and How
What Can You Do with a Computer?
Reengineering and Eternal Hope
Finding a Road from Here to There
An Underwriter's Lab for Usefulness and Usability?
Better Management?
Automating Old Jobs
Better Uses
Augmentation and the Organization
Overcoming Problems
Piece-Wise Design
Specialization and Information Work
Fragmentation
Nonproductive Uses
Learning
Unintended Consequences.
Cost
And Back to Test-and-Fix
A New Scientific Management?
What Then?
Fantasy Business Systems
Work Efficiency Enhancers
An Empowering, Integrating, Obliterating Intelligent Order Processing System
The Paperless Office
New Products
All-Electronic Messages
The Home Shopping Supermall
The Electronic British Library of Congress Francaise
Life, Love, and Intellect
Math
Syntax
Education
Creativity
Entertainment
Enough
Notes
References
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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The Trouble With Computers

9780262621083

0262621088

Supplemental Materials

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

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